What Happened to Misty Copsey?

On September 17, 1992, 14 year old Misty Copsey disappeared after a trip to the Puyallup Fair and despite many big crime players operating in the area at the time (like the green river killer) police dismissed it as a runaway case for months. This week we dig into the missed leads, sketchy suspects, and jurisdictional mess that left a lasting impact on her still unsolved case today. 

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Intro music by Don Edwards

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, welcome back to the podcast and eerily beloved. We are gathered here today with Garrett Mom for episode 31, I believe. Believe? We don't know. Yeah, close enough. I think I think it's 31.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Believability.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Uh-huh. Believability 31. I can I can look. Yep, episode 31. And if you've been listening to every single episode, appreciate you. And if you're a new listener, also appreciate you. And would love it if you would give us five stars and potentially a review on whatever platform you listen to this on. I would be very grateful. Okay, so today we're we have a true crime crime case. Because we did Bigfoot last week, we did Edgefield the week before, and then we did the cow the cows and then Ramsa. So Yeah, it's been a lot of crazy. So it's been a minute since we've done a proper true crime case.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Okay, so true crime case this week. And Garrett, have you heard of the Green River Killer?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Nope.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Never? Nope. Really? If you're listening and you haven't heard of him, we'll only talk about him briefly, but a morbid podcast did like a huge four-part hour and a half episode episodes, deep dive into him and all of his victims. So highly recommend that. So we are not talking about the Greener Killer, but we are talking about Misty Copsy. Do you know who that is? Oh. Do you know who that is? Well, you looked her up, yeah. Yeah, because I looked her up. This case is a little bit frustrating because police dropped the ball multiple times from the beginning. And not many people believed that she wasn't a standard teen runaway, except for her mom. Well, let's get into it. On September 17th, 1992, 14-year-old Missy Copsy and her friend, Trina Bavard, were scheming. The best friend Dugo desperately wanted to go to the Puallop fair that was happening nearby, but they had a problem. Trina's parents wouldn't let her go without a ride home confirmed before they went, and Misty's mom, Diana Smith, could only drop them off as she worked nights as a caregiver for Alzheimer's patients. They lived in Spanaway, and Puallop was t 12 miles southwest or a 20-minute drive, so walking to the fairgrounds was out of the question. The girls hatched a foolproof plan. A bus line from the fairgrounds to Spanaway ran at 8 40 and they would take that home. But they had to have Diana tell Trina's parents that she was picking the girls up and bringing them home. Wait, so they had the mom lie?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Diana was not easily convinced to be an accomplice in their plan, but Misty and Trina promised to make it work. They were good kids and wanted to have a good afternoon at the fair. And they had a game plan to make it home, so Diana agreed. Misty dressed up for their girls' day and borrowed a pair of her mom's jeans. They were baggy and stonewashed with funky stitching up the sides. And when Diana dropped the girls off at 3 p.m., she reiterated that they needed to be responsible and not miss their bus home. She said, if you screw this up, it's going to be the last time you do anything, followed by, I love you. And then the two friends got out of the car while Diana went off to work. Diana's standard night shift was interrupted by a phone call at 8 45. Uh oh. Misty and Trina had missed the bus. What Diana recalls her daughter sounded upset over the phone, but said it was okay that she could get a ride with Reuben Schmidt, an 18-year-old she knew who drove a green 1974 Chevrolet Nova, who also had a crush on Misty. Oh boy. Diana has reported in the news tribune as saying, I don't want you getting a ride from that kid. I don't like that kid. You know I don't call somebody else. Misty said she'd call someone else and then call her mom back when she found a ride. But unfortunately, Diana never got a call from Misty. Throughout the rest of her shift, she tried not to panic, thinking that Misty probably just got a ride from Reuben and forgot to call her back. Diana's worst fears, however, were confirmed when she got home and Misty wasn't in her bed. Oh boy, and she worked the night shift. So right away, Diana had issues trying to get people to take Misty's disappearance seriously. When she tried to report her daughter missing that night, the dispatcher told her that law enforcement couldn't do anything for what sounded like a standard runaway case for 30 days.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

What? 30 days?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

And normally we know it's like 24 hours.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

The first 48.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yeah, exactly. So 30 days was kind of crazy. Thankfully, the next day a staffer took the young girl's disappearance seriously, and she was able to file a report with the Pierce County Sheriff's Office on September 18th, 1992. However, because Misty went missing in Puallop and they lived in Spanaway, which was considered Pierce County, jurisdictional tug of war commenced. Dana wasn't going to wait for police to get their act together and went to the person who was with her daughter that day to get some answers. According to Trina, she last saw Misty at the bus stop and she walked home.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Wait. Wait, only you one of them missed the bus? I thought they both they both missed the bus. But one of them got a ride with the boy and the other one walked home? Twelve miles?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

No, we don't know she got a ride home from the Ruben Kid.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Okay, but she was gonna get a ride home with the Ruben Kid and the other girl was gonna walk home by herself?

unknown 5:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Twelve miles at night.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

So that's what she told her mom that I last left her at the bus stop when we missed the bus and I walked home. I said, I have a lot of questions. One, you walk 12 miles home, two, you left your friend in the dark without a ride home. Very, very strange, but we'll come back to Trina later.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

That's not your friend.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Diana then tracked down Reuben Schmidt, the guy that Misty was going to get a ride from. Maybe he had picked her up, something happened, she wasn't sure. According to the news tribune, when Diana first got a hold of Reuben, his roommate had answered, or first tried to get a hold of him, his roommate had answered the phone. The roommate said that Ruben and his uncle had gone to pick up Misty that night. But when she's unclear? When she did finally get a hold of Reuben, he said that he did get a call from her, but that his roommate was wrong and he didn't have enough gas to go pick her up. He was at a party all night.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Police were adamant that Misty was simply a runaway and refused to investigate further or even go to the media to say that she was missing. Say like what she was wearing, where she was, anything like that. Frustrated, Danny continued following leads and tracking down anyone who last interacted with her daughter, printing out pictures and putting them around where she went missing. So like at the fairgrounds. Mark Vech, a bus driver for the Spanaway route, recognized her photo and confirmed that he had talked to her that night of September 17th. She had asked him when the next bus is coming, but he told her their routes were done for the night, and so she walked away. He said this was around 9.20 p.m. Wait. So she didn't miss the bus?

SPEAKER_03 7:04

No, she did.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

She she did. I think she was trying to find like an alternate route, even if it wasn't like direct.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

The guy said the routes were done. There's no buses. She missed the bus.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

But the mom got the call at 845, and this guy said 920.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Well, he would have had to be on a different route or he would have picked her up. So on September 23rd, six days after Misty was last seen, Diana filed a missing person's missing persons report with the Pallet police. The next day, Gary Smith, the youth emergency services team supervisor, faxed the Cualut police sergeant Herm Carver with the note, this is one of those just don't feel right reports. There's nothing here that points positively to foul play, but it just doesn't feel right. It's been a week and nobody has heard from this girl, and mom is contact the me contacting the media complaining the cops aren't doing anything. Which Well they weren't. So like this at least prompted police to do a cursory glance around the fairgrounds, but no one had seen Misty. And also this is now Yeah, so this is also now seven days later that anyone is actually getting up from behind their desk to look for a 14-year-old.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Have you seen this random 14-year-old in a couple of years?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

No money, no car, and like no reason to run away from home.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Okay, but but maybe. But but the girl that she was with to walk home twelve miles, assuming she, you know, walk like four miles an hour, would I mean it would have taken her like a long time to get home.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Like four hours, five. And that's if she's telling the truth. In the dark. Walking in the dark at night by herself, she would have gotten home in the middle of the night and her parents weren't worried about where her friend was.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Again, that's assuming that she was telling the truth that she walked home. The attitude of law enforcement towards Misty from the beginning set the tone for the entire case. Sergeant Carver immediately assumed it was a standard runaway, and that she would most likely be home soon, and that Diana was doing too much. This was reinforced after speaking with Buck Copsy, Diana's ex-husband. Diana unfortunately had a record. A background check showed she had multiple DUIs and had been convicted of welfare fraud in 1985. Additionally, she had reported Misty missing before back in August of 1992. But according to Diana, this was a false alarm, and she was too embarrassed to call back and tell police that Misty had been home the entire time. Right. So this was enough evidence for Sergeant Carver to put minimal effort into looking for her and confirmed his suspicions that Misty was simply a teenager runaway. Meanwhile, at Misty's school, the hallways were buzzing with rumors about what happened to Misty. When investigated further on September 29th, many of her classmates claimed they had either seen her or heard from her since the 17th. Despite no confirmation that who they had talked to actually said they were Misty, or that they had personally interacted with her, someone who kind of sounded like her over the phone or looked like her from a distance was enough for Sergeant Carver to close the case. According to his case notes, he said, I advised Diana Copsey that I was removing Misty Copsey from NCIC as a missing person, as I believe her to be a runaway.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

Wait, but so does that not make her a missing person, though?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

A runaway teenager with no money and to add insult to injury, the next day Sergeant Carver spoke on a Seattle radio station claiming Misty was alive and well and her mother knew where she was. What?

SPEAKER_03 10:34

You can't just make that up.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Wait. Okay. And for her mom, I just can't imagine how. I mean she's 14. Uh-huh. She can't drive. She has no money. Like But how'd she call her mom? Payphone.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Payphone?

SPEAKER_00 10:51

At the bus stop? Or bus station? So on October 26th, the Misty was reactivated on both state and national disappearance lists and was technically no longer considered a runaway. But law enforcement didn't do this because they believed it to be true and said it was a legal requirement for anyone who had been missing longer than 30 days. Considering the murders and kidnappings of many women and girls in the surrounding area had been dealing with for nearly a decade, it was surprising to many that Missy's disappearance wasn't a bigger deal. In late 1992, the Green River Task Force was revived after being disbanded due to the now over 40 victims believed to be killed by the Green River Killer, who was operating in the areas around Tacoma. The task force was now looking into two girls who had gone missing from the Puallop area as potential victims of the Green River Killer. 14-year-old Kimberly DeLang went missing July 1988, and 15-year-old Anna Chabotnoy went missing in August 1990. Both girls were last seen near a shopping center in Puallop, and both girls' bodies were found near each other off of Washington 410. Similar clustering of dump sites tactic that the Green River used with his previous disposals. While the Green River killer mainly targeted prostitutes and sex workers, a handful of his victims didn't fit that category, and he had just assumed he had just assumed they were because they were walking on the side of the road or hitchhiking.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Okay, but if she was walking, she would have been with her friend. What happened I mean, I just I need to know more about this friend. So now there's three missing girls from the same area. I get it. Okay. But but she was last with her friend and her friend ended up walking home. The friend just kept walking while this girl got picked up by someone? That doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

I mean maybe she told her friend, hey, this guy's coming to get me.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

The Green River Killers are coming to get me?

SPEAKER_03 12:49

No, if anything, it sounds like he would have come to get the friend that walked home.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

That's what I would think. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So the main question at this point was could these three missing girls be part of a larger pattern and additional victims of the Green River Killer? Or is there another person in the area targeting young girls? Jim Doyne, a King County homicide detective who worked on the Green River case, believed the two girls could be additional victims. Baz for Misty without a body was impossible to know. With the other local disappearances and it being well known that the Green River Killer had yet to be caught, you would think police would have some level of urgency at this point?

SPEAKER_03 13:24

Wait, they disbanded the Green River Killer Task Force before they caught him?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Mm-hmm. Cause he like kind of went quiet for a little bit. What? Mm-hmm. Despite there still being 40. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

That's a choice.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

However, Sergeant Herm Sergeant Harm Carver still believed that she was a runaway. He's quoted for the news tribune saying, We've had no one come forward to say we saw her abducted. We saw someone grab her and stick her in a vehicle. So they ultimately had no reason to think that that happened. Right. But also with no evidence, you have no reason to believe that that didn't happen. Especially because it was dark at 8 45, 9 20 in September.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Yeah, so if no one saw it, it must all just be Sunshines and Rainbows.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Oh yes. On December 2nd, 1992, the News Tribune published an article titled Foul Play Feared with Missing Spanaway Girl. In my research, this is the first article published about Missy's disappearance. Wow. In December. After she went missing in September. Three whole months after she went missing. Her status was changed to missing under suspicious circumstances, with Pierce County Sheriff's Spokesman Kurt Benson saying, We believe there's a possibility of foul play. Due to the fact she had no money with her or no previous history of running away, that's what made them change the status. But her mom had been trying to tell them that from the very beginning.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

So the previous weekend, Diana and a group of 20 rescue workers and friends began coming in the woods along 410 near where the bodies of the other two girls had been recovered. Any evidence of Misty. Diana was both relieved and disappointed that nothing of her daughters had been found on that search. Thanks. Despite her case status change at the end of the year, it was revealed on January 26, 1993, on the Northwest Afternoon Show in an interview with Traina Bovard that she had never been interviewed by law enforcement.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Wait, the the friend that walked home? Interesting choice.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

In fact, none of the people Miss Lee was lost in contact with were followed up on either.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

That's crazy. So not the guy, not the uncle, not the room.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

We have to understand this girl would have had to walk for hours in the middle of the night in the dark. And you can imagine when she came home, her parents would have, you know, had all types of questions for her. Where was her friend? Where right? Why why would they why would they have questions? It's not their kid. Well, they would wonder why she came home in the middle of the night. She was supposed to that girl was supposed to get a ride home from Misty's mom, also.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

They didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yes, they did. Remember, that's what she told them.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Mom, this is assuming that her friend was telling the truth, the truth that she walked home.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

Nobody ever got back to her, so.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Right. Okay. Also on this news segment was King County Homicide Detective Jim Doyen, who mentioned previously he was on the Green River Task Force. And while he had no official role in investigating Misty's case, he personally went out to mile post 30 on 410 to investigate himself.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Okay. The news tribune even reports after more than four months, a detective who had taken a stab at looking for Misty, a detective from a neighboring county with no formal stake in the case. Well, well at least someone cares.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

Sherlock.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

After five months of Misty being missing, King County police got a call from a security guard. He had arrived to unlock the utility access road off of 410 used by a Weyerhauser Corp for a search party, and while while the group was waiting, they had found a mound of clothing. A sock, a pair of underwear, and a pair of jeans with funky stitching on the sides was found partially buried in a ditch. What? Diana recognized the jeans she had let her daughter borrow back in September immediately. And lab analysis showed there was no blood or semen on the clothing, but there were three red paint chips on the jeans and what they determined to be male hairs that were mysties.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

In a ditch.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

In the same area where the other two girls' bodies have been found. For investigators, this is the first piece of tangible evidence that they had, and the location pointed to a potential connection with the two other Pioab girls at least. Detective Jim Doyen is reported as saying there's a high likelihood that these three cases are linked. They all disappeared from Pierce County and they all ended up in King County. I would have to be blind not to see a connection. He also noted that the sites differed from typical sites used by the Green River Killer, but didn't rule them out as a suspect completely. Since 1984, seven women who had been confirmed victims of the Green River Killer had been discovered in this nine-mile stretch on 410 between Unemco and Green River. Interestingly, in March 1993, there seemed to be public tension between King County investigators and the Puellet Police. An article titled Runaway or Victim, King Puellet Police split on Teen's Fate. This article went into excessive detail defending their individual investigations. Sergeant Herm Carver still only believed that she was a runaway and with no compelling evidence of foul play was choosing to look into recent sightings of her. Sergeant Carver said there isn't anything that would make someone think we've got a serial murder out here preying on girls.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Minus the like I mean that was just crazy.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

So I just feel like I don't know how you would even say that. Feels completely disingenuous to a 14-year-old that's gone missing.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

I was just gonna say, I was gonna make a joke. Meanwhile, dude back home's like, yeah, you know, like nothing's wrong, run away. Found her jeans, so uh Unfortunately, yeah, that's was his attitude.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

I mean, it doesn't even make any sense. You know, you find her clothing and then you say she's still runaway even though it okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

On the flip side, Detective Jim Doyan and his team were now interviewing witnesses and anyone who was with Misty that day, which the Puellop police still had not done. And this is in March of 1993. They were operating under the assumption that Misty didn't disappear willingly and was a potential victim of the same suspect that killed the other two girls from Puyalo.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Dude, six months later.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

Hey, do you remember that girl you saw six months ago?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Come on.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Which and he was upset too because working on the Green River case, like time really was of the essence because people were going people were appearing so rapidly that they didn't, you know, you had to investigate people right away because with time despite two different jurisdictions pursuing two different possibilities, Missy's case went nowhere. In 2000, eight years after her disappearance, Diana was able to get some level of closure. Pierce County Medical Examiner issued a certificate of presumed death, and a memorial service was held shortly after.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Oh, that's sad.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Well, she had hoped that her daughter was still alive. The discovery of her clothes a few years earlier, followed by no further evidence, had the Emmy an agreement that her daughter was most likely dead.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

This was seven years after they finally close.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Yeah, that's crazy. An outpouring of donations from the community made the memorial service possible, and the service highlighted Mesty's life before the public knew her name. She was a good student who was incredibly athletic, playing basketball, softball, and volleyball in school. So in 2001, Gary Ridgway was arrested and charged with the 48 murders in King County. Green River Killer. Yep. Yep. 48 murders that they actually like had direct ties to him, but they thought it was upwards of 72.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

Finally got him.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Mm-hmm. Police, of course, questioned him about the missing PLUP girls, going as far as to drive him out to the Weyerhauser Core Road to see if it would jog his memory. Unfortunately, Gary Ridgway's word meant nothing since he was a liar and a serial murderer.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I mean, but he claimed he wouldn't take credit for murders he didn't do. The news tribune also reports that he had a good reason to distance himself from any case outside of King County. Part of his plea required a full confession to the murders that took place, according to him, only in King County, and any cases outside of what was agreed on in the plea wouldn't save him from the death penalty. In 2003, forensic testing proved that Gary Ridgway was still a monster at POS, but he was not a suspect in Misty Anna Chabotnoy or Kimberly Kimberly DeLane's murder. Many of his victims. Had paint chips, which they were able to link him to, as he was a truck panel painter. But the red chips found on Misty's pants were not a match. King County Deputy J.K. Pavlovich notes that I learned the paint chip comparison at MicroTrace had determined there was no match between the Copsy evidence and the Ridgway control samples. The paint chips were only ever tested against Gary Ridgway. No one else. But he was not the only suspect in the case, but primarily the main one the police kind of kept looking at until forensics proved otherwise. Which was in 2003.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

So now it's cold. It wasn't the uncle or the dude they were supposed to pick him up?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, there are a few other suspects that they had been looking at. So in ro in January of 1993, so just that following January after she went missing, the name Robert Leslie Hickey crossed the desk of Pierre Police. He was arrested for the rape of a 15-year-old girl that he had picked up on the same stretch of highway that Missy went missing on, five blocks south of the fairgrounds. Despite refusing his offers for sexual favors and hiding in the bushes along the road, the man forced the young girl at knife point into his red Camaro, drove her to a secluded spot, assaulted her, and afterwards pushed her down a ravine. She fell 20 feet but survived and walked three miles to the nearest home. Jeez. Coincidences with Misty's case were enough to get attention of police, but the news tribune reports that their records indicate he was never questioned about Misty's disappearance. And his car was red, and they had found red paint flecks on her jeans.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

And he was a previous offender five blocks away.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

And what did what color was Reuben's car? We don't know yet. It was green.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Green.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

So another suspect was Corey Bobber. From the beginning of the case, I mean who was very involved and invested was Corey. Before Misty went missing, Corey was an armchair detective who was convinced he had figured out who the Green River killer was.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Armchair detective.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Corey wasn't afraid to go to both law enforcement and the local press with his newest theories and quickly latched onto Misty's case. During the search that uncovered Misty's clothing, Dana's sister, Misty's aunt, even accused him of being involved with her disappearance after he was excited when they made their discovery. To him, it was proof that his sleuthing up to that point had been accurate and the police needed to listen to him. The appearance of the clothing money theories could have been planted, potentially by Corey, as a way to get law enforcement to take Missy's case seriously and not think of her as a runaway. For 17 years, Corey was in regular contact with Diana. It even helped her fight for Missy's case to stay relevant to investigators in the press. His interest in the case led to both police and Diana being suspicious of him, but he maintains his innocence and hopes Missy's case is resolved.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Wow. Yeah, I mean.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

And he was only arrested on like drug charges. He didn't have any major kidnapping, sexual assault.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

He had like an ounce of weed on him, and he got 15 years.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Yeah, I mean he seems fine.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

He was just like heavily involved. He was kind of whispering theories onto her mom's ear, and it didn't help the divide between her and the police, that's for sure. So over the years, police did not forget about Reuben Schmidt. Upon original questioning, he confirmed that Misty had called him, but he was at a party that night. However, he also mentioned that he had been suffering from periodic blackouts for years and didn't remember what happened after Misty's call. In fact, he told police when he woke up at his grandma's farm near Unumclaw.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Search that place ASAP.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Which was only six miles from where her clothes were later recovered. So like not close, but also not that far. In 1996, because he did have a car, Ruben appeared on police's radar again when one of Misty's best friends accused him of sexual assault, but didn't press charges citing additional trauma and stress caused by an ad by additional investigations in a trial.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Okay, this guy is completely suspicious.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

So he sounds like a gem.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Nice guy. Real sweet lovely. Yeah, right. But we didn't talk to him or question him when this happened. So now we're He did take a polygraph.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

He did take a polygraph, but the results were inconclusive. And they found that he was trying to like put himself in a trance like state to try to skew the results. Like he was trying to fall asleep. Yeah. So they're like, okay, weird, but we can't prove the agent anything. So okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

So we got a guy with a red car. We have this gumbagger.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

We got this gumbag, we have the armchair detective, and then we have Michael Rainer.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Who's this guy? So police later discovered that Trina had lied about what happened after they missed the bus.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Oh, so she's a liar.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Where she told police she'd walked home. In actuality, the 14-year-old's boyfriend, 23-year-old Michael Rainer, picked her up.

SPEAKER_03 27:32

Oh my god. Twow. Twenty-three?

SPEAKER_00 27:36

When Michael picked her up, Trina told Misty they could give her a ride, but reports say Misty didn't like or trust the older man, so she didn't get in the car. It's suspected that after dropping Trina off at home, Michael went back to the stretch of highway and convinced Misty to get in the car. Despite theories, Michael passed the polygraph and police didn't look further into him.

SPEAKER_03 27:56

What color is the car?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

However, it should be noted that when Michael was 16, he was accused of abducting and sexually assaulting an 11-year-old at knife point. What? What? But no charges were filed as the case was later dropped.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

What? Okay, okay. Why would Trina do that if she knew her? I mean, this guy is a scumburger.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Maybe she didn't know that seven years ago he raped a girl at knife point.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

I think everyone would know that.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Like I don't know. I mean, he would have graduated high school by the time she was in middle school.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

I mean, that's crazy. Lots of scumbags. Okay, so we're so our list of potential suspects is significant. So that's why her friend wasn't with her, because she her friend never walked home. No. But she can't walk 10 miles. No. By herself in the middle of the night. 12 miles. I'm sorry, 12 miles. In the middle of the night. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

So it's now been 34 years since Misty was last seen, and Little Leeds or suspects have been heavily pursued in connection with her disappearance. Her case remains unsolved. And sadly, Diana Smith died in 2020, not knowing what happened to her daughter.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Oh, that's sad. So that's Misty Copsy is still considered a missing person's as far as the And after her mom lied for her and said this these are good girls, they just want to have a good time. Her mom probably had so much guilt.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Yeah. And her ex-husband, Misty's dad, was still convinced that she was a runaway, also. It's like her 18th birthday came and he went to the there was a news article that was like, father awaiting phone call from Miss Tia's it's her 18th birthday or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

Oh, so she's no longer bound to Diane.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

What a weirdo.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

And the police still think that she's only a missing person. A runaway.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

That's messed up.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Mm-hmm. Diana said when she would see like missing flyers or missing persons' billboards with her daughter's name on it, it would like piss her off. Because she's not missing. She was she was probably murdered.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

So someone knows what happened to her. Maybe it'll come out. Deathbed confession, but it just sad. Sad all around. And I don't know if I mentioned this, but her the forensic evidence on her pants didn't match the two girls that hadn't been buried in the same area. So those two had a killer and then Misty.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

A different one. I think the friend, quote, I'll put in quotes, was a pretty bad person.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Mom. She was 14.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, still.

SPEAKER_03 30:52

When you're 14.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Yeah, when you're 14. Help the police do something, at least share the information. Don't lie. Like you know, like your friend's like life is hanging in the balance.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, I'm sure she has some level of guilt about it too.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

We know that the first 48, you know, was really, really important.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

And the first four months police.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

I mean, she just she just wasn't honest and and she kind of led them down the path to think this girl is a runaway, right? If she would have said and been honest about the fact that she was alone, they wouldn't have assumed that she was just a runaway.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Well, and multiple of her classmates were like, Oh, I saw her when they hadn't actually seen her.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Well, you know, rumors are, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

I know, but the police took that as fact, unfortunately. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

How they did not stay together after they had gotten the permission to go just blows my mind, honestly. Like that's like stupid on steroids. And then I I feel bad, and it sounds like there were so many um bad people.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Well, yeah, there were a lot of offenders operating in that area and that they knew of.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Yeah, what's up in Washington? Why are it's like Sex Offender Central?

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Mm-hmm. And there were like six known serial killers operating at that time, too.

SPEAKER_03 32:20

Yeah, well that's just that's back when they would like publicize them too, so people were just getting off on the attention.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Mm-hmm. Well, and the boy that she called to pick her up. I mean, honestly, how could they not look at him right away? She called him and then he suffers from blackouts, which is we know what happens. Like now we know that like when when people do bad things, oftentimes they do compartmentalize and blackout.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Well, and then he wasn't home because he ended up at his grandma's house. Yeah. At the farm?

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Like after a party?

SPEAKER_00 32:53

He came out later and said he's he lied to police sometimes because he just wanted them to get off his back. But like, why would you lie placing yourself closer to Again?

SPEAKER_01 33:02

How is that helpful if if you know someone is missing, you know, if if you didn't do anything wrong? If you didn't do anything wrong and you know someone is missing, wouldn't you want to do your best to make sure that someone wasn't pointing the light at you, pointing the finger at you? Maybe unless you were guilty.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Wait, that guy with the green car, he was 18?

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

And you had a crush on a 14-year-old? Dude, something's in the water up there. That's nuts. 23 and 14, 18 and 14.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Mm-hmm. So, you know, I looked this up since you told me about it, and I saw that her dad has come back on and been on a few podcasts, and the Trina has been on a few podcasts now that they're older, you know, since it's been so many.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Yeah, I think ID just did a big um Misty Copti is missing series where they'd interview police and because it's technically still an open case, I don't have any access to police files or anything like that. So Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

I think that what the dad said, at least the last I read, was that he's convinced it's the the boy that was supposed to pick her up.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

Yeah, it could be. You know, I mean he just feels like Oh, so now he thinks it's not a runaway.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

His story didn't make sense. Well, I think a lot of the runaway stuff was issues between him and the wife at the the ex-wife at the time. Probably right, it was more of a you know, I mean she's a 14-year-old teenage girl. Um and she was kind of being used, you know, between the the parents as you know, that was their their type of warfare. But I mean, you know, the mom, I feel really bad for the mom dying and never knowing. And that they've never found anything. Nope. No body parts.

unknown 34:53

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

I wonder if the guy lived on a pig farm, his grandma, grandpa.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

I don't know. I just I don't understand why you would place yourself closer to the scene and why you would willingly admit that you have blackouts where you don't remember what happened. Just like, why would you tell police that?

unknown 35:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

That's not an alibi. That's that doesn't clear you of anything, you know?

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Yeah, I mean this 1992, so that would have been when I, you know, graduated from high school. And I was always creeped out by, well, the Green River killer, because we knew that was, you know, happening at the at that time. You know, even in college I would worry about that, but you always you knew the rules to be with friends, to not go places alone, to not you know what I'm saying? Like you you know what the rules are. Follow the rules.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Well, and people weren't doing sex work because I wanted to. It was kind of out of like they had to to survive.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Well, some maybe yes and no, but I'm just saying, like, so if you just think about a 14-year-old at the time, I I totally get it. I mean, I would have been a you know, 17-year-old at the time. But you knew, like, especially fairs, I mean, like, stay with your friends. And the fact that a friend totally just left her, that's that's just not cool. You don't you don't do that. So I guess for for this, because we do the believability and creepy, I mean believable, we know what happened, it's true crime, so there's no believability, right? Because it's that's true. True.

SPEAKER_03 36:31

I don't think we're doing believability and creepy live on on true crime stuff.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Never?

SPEAKER_03 36:35

No.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

I don't think so, yeah. I think we stopped doing that. Oh, I thought we did.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

Nah, it's weird.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

It's sad. Obviously, it's creepy, obviously believable, like it's sad because there aren't any answers all these years later. Maybe she is alive, but all signs kind of point to that not being the case, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Well they found her clothes. I mean, what she just living a life of like that yeah, that would be weird. I mean, it would be great, but it's usually not what happens. Nope.

SPEAKER_03 37:07

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

And I'm disappointed in the police.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

They really am relationship ego's got in the way of They really delayed getting some needed resources on this case that could have could have helped them or just basic information. Their due diligence and follow-up.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

And in you know, actually investigating the people surrounding the case. Including the girl that she was supposed to be with, the guy that was supposed to pick her up. How about the girl's boyfriend who talk about a creeper?

SPEAKER_03 37:44

23. Yeah, what color is his car? The douche canoe.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

I don't know. That's a great question. Didn't say.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

But the red car, I mean, you know, if there's red paint that, you know, I just feel like there's a few things they could have followed up on.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Well, and the red paint flax went missing.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Of course they did.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

I mean, this is uh just mishandling of evidence one-on-one.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Yeah, the sad reality.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Like they had to send it to Illinois an i an Illinois crime lab, and then that the Illinois crime lab adopted they had sent it back, but they didn't, and the bag was empty and nothing was in there. It was just a whole whole lot of nonsense that is unfortunate and it sucks.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

But Well, I hope there's resolution to this case. Like I said, if you know, some of these ones that you've been doing, and I know this is big I mean, you know, there's been a lot of podcasts on this or people have done series on trying to figure it out. Now that it's been so long, they figure, hey, someone's gonna remember something and now be willing to talk. It's you know, you're so far removed from it. So that'd be great to to get some resolution for the family that's left.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Mm-hmm. Yeah, the anniversary is coming up next month, so if you're going to a fair, don't go by yourself. Stay with friends. Be a good friend. Don't be an asshole. Don't think you're invincible because you're 14. Bad things happen to everybody. Unfortunately, that's just the world we live in. But yeah, that's the case of Miss Tecopsy. Also, there was no like contact police if you have information on any of this stuff, which I thought was kind of strange. Whatever. Um, yeah, if you like this episode or any of the other ones, rank and review them, please. I'd really appreciate it. If you have a true crime case, a spooky story, anything like that, please email us earlybelovedpodcasts at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, threads, all the places, early beloved podcast. Links to both the email and the social media will be in the show notes. And we will see you next week. Okay, bye.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Bye.